Serbia and the War in Ukraine.

• Author: Ramet, Sabrina P.
• Position: COMMENTARY

Russia's war against Ukraine has had political and strategic repercussions in the Western Balkans, creating a context in which Serbian dreams of expansion have been revived, albeit in a less ambitious form than were pursued by President Slobodan Milosevic in the initial phase of the 1991-1995 War of Yugoslav Succession. Among the effects of the war in Ukraine is a pervasive sense that many things have become possible and, in particular, Belgrade's earlier program to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina and to re-establish its hegemony in Kosovo seems now to be revived, though conversations in Belgrade and Banja Luka (the latter, the capital of the Serb-controlled part of Bosnian-Herzegovina known as the Republika Srpska or RS) revolve around fantasies of conjoining only the RS, rather than all of Bosnia-Herzegovina (as Milosevic attempted in the first years of the 1990s), (1) with Serbia. In Kosovo, Prime Minister Albin Kurti has expressed concern that there is a grave risk of armed conflict with Serbia. (2) NATO Councils take this risk seriously and, already in March, declared that the alliance was "ready to intervene if stability would be endangered." (3) NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg reiterated this pledge in mid-August 2022, noting that NATO already had more than 3,700 peacekeeping troops in Kosovo and was prepared, if necessary, to "move forces, deploy them where needed and increase our presence." (4)

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Russian President Vladimir Putin have something important in common: they are both unreconciled to the loss of territory in the past. Putin, for his part, has said that the break-up of the Soviet Union was the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century and his war in Ukraine reflects his desire to restore at least part of the Western borders of the empire once ruled by Moscow. This is, in fact, the fourth time Putin has gone to war to change the status quo on Russia's Western border. The first time was in 2008 when he went to war against Georgia and wrested South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgian control, setting them up as nominally independent satellites. This was followed by Russia's annexation of Crimea in February 2014 and later by the Russian establishment of the breakaway Donetsk Republic in Eastern Ukraine in April 2014. Politicians in the Baltic States (perhaps especially Estonia) worry that Putin might ideally like to invade their countries too, in spite of their being members of NATO. Finland's sudden rush to get into NATO reflects a suspicion in Helsinki that just maybe Putin might like to restore Russian control in their country, as Finland was part of tsarist Russia from 1809 to 1917. Putin sees his historical role as restoring the greatness of Russia and he has shown that he is prepared to accept high costs in the pursuit of this goal.

From Vucic's point of view, the loss of Kosovo was clearly the greatest tragedy in modern Serbian history, even though the population was more than 70 percent Albanian by 1971 and more than 80 percent Albanian by 1991. Today, the population of Kosovo is more than 90 percent Albanian. But, since at least the 19th century and even more so since the myth-making of the World War Two-era pro-Axis regime of Milan Nedic, (5) Kosovo has been seen by most Serbs as the historic cradle of Serbia. They remember that it was part of the 14th century empire of Tsar Dusan Uros IV the Mighty and that it was in Kosovo that, on June 28, 1389, a Christian army led by Serbian Prince Lazar Hrebeljanovic met an Ottoman Army led by Sultan Murad I on the field of battle. Lazar and Murad both lost their lives that day and, following the battle, Serbia became an Ottoman vassal until finally losing its statehood altogether in 1459. It is sometimes thought that most adult Serbs believe that the Battle of Kosovo was a significant event for Serbia (especially after the dramatic open-air commemoration of the battle on its 600th anniversary, at the site where it was fought) and some Serbs view Lazar as a Christian martyr.

It is extremely unlikely that the medieval kingdom and the battle of 1389 loom large in Vucic's thinking. But it is clear enough that he does not accept the shrinkage of what he still considers the legitimate borders of Serbia. Just as Putin wants to restore the greatness of Russia, Vucic wants to restore Serbia's effective pre-1999 borders, when Kosovo was still under Serbian control. Then there is the lost war of 1991-1995. The now deceased Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic launched hostilities first against Croatia and later against Bosnia-Herzegovina with the idea that the territory of the short-lived Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (1992-2003), consisting of Serbia with the provinces of Vojvodina and Kosovo plus Montenegro, would be enlarged. Instead, Milosevic failed to gain any territory through that war; in addition, his successors had to witness the declarations of independence first by Montenegro in 2006 (two months after Milosevic's death in March 2006) and then, following multilateral coordination with the key Western states, by Kosovo in February 2008. For Vucic the loss of Kosovo is simply unacceptable, which is why Serbia has refused to recognize the country's independence. He gave the game away in March when he said, "Regardless of all pressures and blackmail, no matter what anyone thinks, Serbia will preserve its territorial integrity." (6) Given that the Serbian President does not recognize the independence of Kosovo, it follows that the territorial integrity he wants to 'preserve' includes Kosovo. It is worth noting, however, that Vucic's policy vis-a-vis Kosovo has evolved over time, at least to some extent. Thus, in 2018, he proposed an exchange of territories between Serbia and Kosovo, under which Belgrade would have ceded parts of the Presevo Valley to Kosovo, in exchange for which Prishtina would have ceded the northern part of Kosovo to Serbia. (7) This gambit raised many eyebrows in the region and, to a certain extent, provoked some tremors of instability in the Western Balkans, as Macedonia (which had not yet changed its name) and Montenegro feared that there might be a domino effect, impacting their territories. The only influential Kosovar politician to express some interest in the idea was Hashim Thaci, at that time President of Kosovo (Thaci was later forced to resign his office, due to allegations of war crimes; this contributed to the failure of the plan for an exchange of territories).

Then there is the legacy of the Dayton Peace Accords of November 1995, which divided Bosnia-Herzegovina into a Federation run by Bosniaks and Croats and the Republika Srpska run by Serbs. The dominant figure in the RS for the past three decades has been Milorad Dodik, currently the Serb member of the state presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina. Dodik has kept Bosnia-Herzegovina in a state of uncertainty for most of these years by repeatedly threatening to pull the RS out of Bosnia-Herzegovina--a move which cannot be justified by any appeal to constitutional or legal arguments. Although Dodik speaks of wanting to establish the RS as an independent state, it is more likely that he wants to see it conjoined with the Republic of Serbia; indeed, in an interview with the Belgrade daily newspaper Vecernje Novosti in January 2022, Dodik promised that the Republika...